Home network systems have been provided that can include a set-top box media server that communicates with various components in the home, e.g., TVs, laptop computers, and custom display devices. To establish network communication paths, power line communication (PLC) networks have been introduced and have gained in popularity owing to the fact that the home's existing AC power grid is used to also carry entertainment data between various components in the home network system which are plugged into AC wall sockets. In this way, no new wiring is required, rendering most home power grids into effective network backbones.
The present invention makes the following critical observation. Several PLC technologies have been introduced, and in general cannot coexist with each other in the same neighborhood. For example, if a user uses PLC adapters that employ regular orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and his neighbor uses PLC adapters that employ wavelet OFDM technology, a conflict occurs and both could interfere each other.
A document titled “ETSI Technical Specification 101 867” proposes to resolve the conflict problem by assigning fixed, static bandwidths for each PLC technology, but as understood herein this is an inefficient solution. Specifically and supposing for illustration that two PLC technologies are accounted for with each being assigned one-half of the total PLC bandwidth, when one system is not being used the other system nonetheless can exploit only one half of the PLC bandwidth, even though the other half is not used. A more flexible, efficient approach is provided herein.